04/26/2017

What Is Sexual Agency?

In previous posts on the blog, I have written about how a certain matrix of modern force relations has operationalized ideas about autonomy, choice, agency, and their cohorts in order to advance certain (neoliberal) political ends. For instance, I have written about how notions of autonomy are instrumentalized to facilitate the incremental normalization of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, especially among racialized and disabled populations (which are by no means mutually exclusive social groups). In journal articles, I have tried to show how the notions of autonomy and choice (among others) have facilitated the incremental normalization of prenatal testing and screening and other genetic technologies such as embryonic stem cell research.

I drew upon the prescient and innovative ideas about social power, subjectivity, and freedom that Foucault introduced to advance my arguments in these contexts. Foucault argued that modern forms of power enable subjects to act in order to constrain them. In other words, power and (modern ideas about) subjective autonomy do not exist apart from each other; rather, power operates through the subject’s self-conception as autonomous and free. Modern forms of power operate by guiding and limiting the possible courses of action from which subjects may choose. Modern subjectivity has been molded in a particular way, that is, a way that has produced subjects who are self-legislating, self-governing, and “responsibilized” (to use Wendy Brown’s term).

This construal of power is in stark contrast to what Foucault referred to as “juridical” (or, juridico-discursive) conceptions of power. As Foucault described them, juridical conceptions posit that power is fundamentally repressive, can be exchanged with or subtracted from subjects like a possession, and flows downward from a centralized authority, institution, or group. As I have noted on the blog in the past, Foucault argued that this latter conception of power has obscured a form of power that he called “biopower,” which is a form of power whose primary aim is population management and normalization. Now, to philosophers unfamiliar with Foucault’s ideas, this description of his account of power might seem to suggest that (paradoxically) Foucault attributed to power the agency that he was reluctant to ascribe to people themselves. I should point out, therefore, that he argued that power is both intentional and nonsubjective: forms of power operate toward certain aims but cannot be attributed to a given subject who can be said to hold it.

Discussions about “sexual agency” that have taken place in various contexts over the past few weeks have reminded me of the extent to which these and many of Foucault’s other ideas about power were distinct from the ideas about it that continue to hold sway in philosophy, political theory, and other areas of the academy. To recite an oft-cited remark from Foucault: political theory has still not cut off the head of the king.

In the context of discussions about the Anna Stubblefield case that have taken place in disability studies venues during the last week (and before), for example, disability theorists and activists have repeatedly appealed to ideas about “consent” and “sexual agency” in order to respond to criticisms of Stubblefield, implying (disclaimers notwithstanding) that criticisms of Stubblefield had implications for the recognition of disabled subjectivities and sexual practice. To take another example, in the context of discussions of a book about events involving Peter Ludlow, at one time a philosophy professor, and philosophy students at Northwestern University, philosophers on all sides of the debate have variously mobilized the idea of “sexual agency” in order to advance their conflicting arguments.

Most of the arguments in these diverse contexts have assumed that there is some kind of inherent (hence, universal and transhistorical) human trait called “sexual agency;” that is, there has been little recognition of the fact that “sexual agency” is a very sophisticated, learned set of historically and culturally specific practices that are thoroughly imbued with power; that is, the idea of sexual agency and its exercise do not stand apart from power. Why do these philosophers and disability theorists and activists think that power relations would so conveniently acquiesce to people’s wishes?

In my view, these disparate discussions and debates would benefit from a more complex understanding of the relation between power, autonomy, agency, and coercion. In my forthcoming book, Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I advance arguments designed to show why philosophers and disability theorists ought to revise their ideas about autonomy, freedom, and consent, especially in the context of reproductive and other genetic technologies and physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.

I agree with you that philosophers and other academics must give more critical attention to disabled people, our concerns, our social situation, our subjection, discrimination against us, etc.

There is in fact a growing body of critical work on disability and disabled people elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences. However, critical philosophical work on disability remains severely marginalized in the discipline. One aim of this blog is to bring critical scholarship on disability to the centre of discussion in philosophy. The symposium on Melinda Hall's book which was posted here last week is a vital part of that activity.